1,321 Reasons To Buy An Amazon Kindle

Amazon says that I have purchased 1,321 physical books since they started keeping track in 1997.  For the math-lazy, that’s about 10 books a month, give or take.  I have nineteen two-foot by six-foot bookshelves in my house that are stuffed full of books, double packed and double stacked wherever possible.  Yeah, I’m a reader, I love books.  And obviously, I’m not good at giving them away.  I have zero room for new books and don’t want to get rid of many of the ones I have.

Whoa.  I have no room for new books.  This is scary. 

Wait a minute, I need new books!  Books are my insurance against Writers Guild of America strikes and power outages and my motivation to stationary bike, stepper and treadmill (when I’m not playing WoW, Hellgate:London or The Witcher while I bike, stepper and treadmill). 

Enter Amazon’s Kindle electronic reading device.  I’ll admit it, was dead-set against it at first.  I’ve had a couple of electronic readers before, and they started gathering dust after a month or so.  They were either clunky, or the book selection wasn’t good, or reading the screen was tiring or the battery life was lousy or synching them was a pain.  Not to mention the Kindle is expensive, about $400.  That’s a bit of an investment given how at any time, Amazon can abandon the device.    Then I looked at my 1000-plus books and wondered how many of them I really need to own in physical form.  Sure, I really like to own hard copies of some of the series that I’ve been reading for years or re-read every few years.  But lots of them are just entertaining reads, not “treasured” books.  These are candidates for the Kindle.  And hey, lots of the Kindle editions let you download a “sample” before you buy.  Good-bye some of the bad purchases I’ve made online because I couldn’t peek inside first.  Still, $400 is a lot.

Then my birthday rolled around.  Every year for my birthday my mom gives me a pile of cash.  This is because every year for my husband’s birthday my mom gives him a pile of cash and either she doesn’t want me to figure out that she likes him better than me, or she’s afraid of another my-brother-gets-a-minibike-and-a-professional-grade-drumset-while-I-get-a-corduroy-purse-and-a-flannel-nightgown-for-Christmas-and-I-never-let-her-forget-it incident.  This year, I dropped my birthday wad on a Kindle.

Turns out, lots of the things people complain about with the Kindle are true.  It’s ugly, I’m pretty sure the designers at Amazon haven’t pulled their heads out since Doc Brown made the DeLorean cool because this design is retro but in a bad, homely sort of way.  And sheesh, only about half of my fiction wish list is available in a Kindle edition.  Yes, it’s a pain to reach the power button when the book cover is on it, and if you take the book cover off there’s nowhere to hold the Kindle without hitting the Next Page-Prev Page buttons.  But wow, no synching!  New books arrive almost instantaneously via Whispernet!  I can read the newspaper without getting my fingers all grubby!  So far I haven’t let it out of my sight.  I’ll let you know if I do.